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EDI Implementation Guides

In the early 1990's AACRAO's SPEEDE Committee, CCSSO, and NCES worked together to develop the first electronic standard in higher education. This standard developed was for processing transcripts and was developed in an existing technology called electronic data interchange (EDI). With the successful launch and implementation of an EDI transcript standard, other data exchange processes were developed in EDI as well, including admissions and test score reporting. (NOTE: While use of EDI grew and continues to be implemented in the registrar and admissions communities, for a number of reasons including programming complexities, the financial aid community did not adopt and implement EDI but works now primarily in XML.)

The EDI standards were developed under the requirements of the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) and are officialy ANSI standards. These standards, however, are no longer maintained as the admissions, financial aid, and registrar communities are now developing standards in a new technology called eXtensible Markup Language (XML) under PESC. The launch and use of XML does not mean that use of EDI is obselete. In choosing which technology to use EDI or XML, organizations must determine the capabilities of the organization with which they exchange data and perform a number of analyses including cost/benefit and strategic. The guides provided here and developed by SPEEDE supplement the standards that are available from ANSI.

The most current version of the EDI Suite of Transactions is Version 4 published in April 1998 and based on X12 Version Release 4010. These implementation guides are intended for postsecondary (college/university) institutions that are implementing the exchange (sending and receiving) of data with other postsecondary institutions and the receiving of student records from high schools.

The Statistical Networking Applications Project (SNAP) has published a comprehensive implementation guide for data exchanges between and among PK - 12 schools/districts and colleges and universities. These two editions are fully compatible.